Holden and Andy
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Eh, Who Has Time To Get It Right Anymore?
Buried a bit in Larry Blumenfeld's post yesterday is a complaint that will be familiar to too many journalists: A piece he'd written for a newspaper appeared on its website under someone else's byline, and when he pointed out the error, he was met with a disturbingly cavalier, we'll-see-if-we-can-fix-that response.
In the Columbia Journalism Review, Victor Navasky's report on a CJR survey of magazines offers even more reason for writers and readers to keep that bottle of ibuprofen handy. Documenting with hard numbers the pervasiveness of sloppy editing practices online, it also plumbs some of the causes. A sample:
• 59 percent of those surveyed said that either there was no copy editing whatsoever online (11 percent), or that copy editing is less rigorous than in the print edition.
• 40 percent said that when Web editors, as opposed to print editors, are in charge of content decisions, fact-checking is less rigorous (17 percent said there was no fact-checking online when Web editors made the content decisions).
As Navasky writes, "And that's taking respondents at their word!"
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